[buddypress-trac] [BuddyPress] #3819: Create An Activity Lookup Table

[buddypress-trac at lists.automattic.com]

#3819: Create An Activity Lookup Table
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 Reporter:  jeffsayre    |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Core         |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |
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Comment (by jeffsayre):

 Replying to [comment:1 cnorris23]:
 > So you're suggesting something similar to WP's category/tag/taxonomy
 schema?

 You could look at my suggestion in that way. However, folksonomies are
 created by the users of the site, not the developers.

 Within BP, activity data (activity group names and activity actions) is
 not technically data as it is not stored in a database. Instead it is
 hardcoded in BP's core and any 3rd-party's plugin codebase. As such, it is
 at best phantom data as I state above.

 The idea of a lookup table is nothing new, of course. Developers have been
 using them ever since RDBMses came into vogue. I suppose what I'm
 suggesting might better be called a reference table as the term "lookup
 table" is often used more accurately for in-memory data storage. In this
 case, data in an in-memory lookup table would be pulled into the array via
 querying the reference table. Thus the data is not created on the fly via
 the codebase. Instead, it is loaded into an array from the database --
 which is where data belongs.

 Currently, the activity array is recreated and rebuffered into memory on
 each page load. This is an unnecessary use of resources. It should be
 queried once from the activity reference table and then used in memory.
 But, the in-memory array would include an unique index value for each
 activity action.

 The basic idea is to allow for key data that does not change very often
 and is not added to too often, to be stored in an easily accessible and
 referenceable place. Let's use the term activity reference table instead
 of activity lookup table.

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Ticket URL: <https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/3819#comment:2>
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